Journal - Comune di Monteleone di Spoleto

28
among surviving works of ancient art, the chariot is the first
to depict the life cycle of achilles, a subject that remained
popular until the end of the fourth century a.d. 70 debate
continues over this identification. most scholars have
accepted it, thanks to the cogency of Hampe and Simon’s
arguments, as well as further corroboration by Cristofani in
1996. nonetheless, reservations were soon expressed, 71 and
persisted, but were not based on new, thoroughgoing
study. 72 i believe that the conclusions presented here in
Section iii.B demonstrate that Hampe and Simon’s hypothesis
is incontrovertible, setting aside the intractable difficulty
of identifying the recumbent woman under achilles’s
biga on the proper left panel. 73
debate on matters of style and iconography, which are
closely linked to the cultural background of the craftsmen
and the location of their workshops, started the moment
the chariot was unearthed and continues to the present day.
it must be kept in mind that this is a unique work, the predecessor
of all parade chariots from ancient italy, hence it
cannot be classified by comparing it with dissimilar contemporary
artifacts. moreover, most european authors who
have written about the chariot in their publications — none
dedicated solely to the vehicle after those by Furtwängler
and ducati — have not seen it close up. Furthermore, the
excellent photographs first published by Tarchi in 1936
were not available until 1933, and most of the comments
were based on Furtwängler’s type of illustrations. 74 Thus, it
is not surprising that the chariot was downgraded to “provincial,
non-etruscan” by Pallottino in 1959 and Banti in
1964, or to “etruscan but provincial” by Torelli in 1976,
1981(a), and 1985. after research by ursula Höckmann in
1982 resolved the debate about the etruscan origin of the
chariot, 75 the craftsmanship of the monteleone chariot was,
in some quarters, still considered the same as that of the
modest bronze revetments from Todi, better known as the
Ferroni laminae. 76
a new period of research dawned in the 1990s after a
critical reexamination of the old restoration included direct
study of the object. 77 ninety years after Furtwängler’s publication
— the only one that can be considered scientific — it
is clear that both its method and approach are still valid. The
insights presented by this great German scholar concerning
the chariot’s style and iconography, as well as the technical
skills of the master craftsman, have been reexamined, the
pejorative etruscan connotations of the decoration questioned,
and the activity of east Greek craftsmen operating in
etruria at a time not much beyond the second quarter of the
sixth century B.C. suggested. 78 This revival of a hypothesis
assigning a foreign genesis to the chariot’s decoration, after
the old approaches of Furtwängler (1905, 1913), ducati
(1909), Brendel (1978), and, more recently, Bonamici
(1997), is still not convincing, 79 perhaps because to date
there has been no sure evidence. our publication seeks to
place the discussion on a solid, up-to-date foundation.